Sculptor's labour of love for our Jane

Hampshire will mark the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death this year. The starting point is a new statue of the author in her home town, created by sculptor Adam Roud.

IN October 1800 Jane Austen described visiting the Basingstoke Assembly in the Market Square, “It was a pleasant ball, and still more good than pleasant, for there were nearly sixty people, and sometimes we had seventeen couple. The Portsmouths, Dorchesters, Boltons, Portals, and Clerks were there... I danced nine dances out of ten.”

Almost 200 years after her death Jane, a local girl who became one of the most famous women writers in the world, will return to the Market Square where she danced the night away, this time in glittering bronze.

Maria Miller, MP for Basingstoke, initiated the idea of a sculpture to highlight Jane Austen’s connection with the town and local sculptor Adam Roud, born and bred in Ellisfield near Basingstoke, has been commissioned by the Hampshire Cultural Trust to create the life-sized statue.

Back to the present, dear reader and it’s December when I visit Adam in his dusty, cold studio, a large tractor shed overlooking the idyllic countryside of Farleigh Wallop. It is surprising to learn that famous works such as Antony Gormley’s ‘The Angel of the North’ and several of Damien Hirst’s pieces have been in this very studio, when Adam was commissioned to ‘chase’ them - a process of finishing the bronze with various tools, including welding pieces together, and refining the metal so that it is smooth and in one piece.